220 Y.L. Month of Work
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Castor slowly rolled in her bed, stirring and rolling about like a bear coming out of hibernation.
“Get up Castor, Jeric needs your help downstairs.” Her brother Miles said from outside the door.
Mumbling and staggering about, Castor slowly pushed herself to the edge of her bed and rested her head in her hands. She sat there for several seconds, trying to fight off the enjoyable wave of sleepiness that was coming over her again. With a mix between a shout and a grumble she jumped up, rubbing her eyes and yawning. Why does staying up late make you feel like you have a hangover?
Her feet thumped loudly on the cold wood floor[img src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image002.gif" alt="http://cdncache-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" border="0" height="10" width="10">
Her hair looked as if a tornado had come through it. How’d people come up with something called beauty sleep? Morons obviously never slept. Castor stopped thinking and started brushing, realizing what she had said.
She washed her face and in a few minutes she had her mane of red hair brushed and set it back in a ponytail. I've got enough there to make it three ponytails and have leftovers! She moved the chair aside and opened up the oaken chest right under the window. It held several clothing materials and she grabbed a pair of stockings. She pulled them on, grabbed the boots by her door, and yanked them on as she hopped down the staircase.
A wave of laughter, chatter, and silverware clanking together greeted Castor, as well as the overly enticing smell of eggs, bacon, apple cider, fresh fruit, and hot rolls. Jeric’s special recipe ones! Castor had to duck under the overhang at the bottom of the stairs and the sight that greeted her made her stomach gurgle with joy.
The big room was scattered with round tables covered with red-and-white checkered tablecloths and most were at the moment occupied, and therefore mounted with food of some kind. The wall on the right held the door which was open and let the aromas of the food waft out into the street, grabbing and dragging people in. Two big windows were also mounted on that wall and allowed large rays of golden sunlight to spill in and warm the inside.
To the left sat the kitchen, the front of it set up like a bar where customers could come ask for drink refills. Three rotund barrels of apple cider took up a good portion of the far side of the bar, while pitchers of cold cow’s milk, goat milk, buttermilk, and water took up the rest. Wooden cups were stacked ready to be filled with the delicious drinks.
Behind the bar was where all the real work went on Castor headed there thinking, I could get used to this . . . oh wait, I already have. She pushed open the wooden door and was hit by a blast of warm air.
The big furnace was in the middle of the back wall and it belched forth a very hot wave of air. Castor skipped by it, waved at the workers who smiled back, and stepped over to Jeric.
He turned back and smiled. “Hello Castor, been sleeping inn?” He laughed before he could stop himself.
Castor just stared, barely finding humour in the joke.
“Or maybe,” Jeric said, once he had stopped laughing, “you haven’t been sleeping at all. In all seriousness Castor, you are staying up too late and as a result getting down here to work late. I need you to be more responsible.”
Castor nodded. “Yeah I know.” She didn't sound too whole-heartedly about it, but this was not the place or time to speak of it, so Jeric went back to cracking eggs. “So, I guess I’ll get to work then. Where’s Miles?”
Jeric pointed to the back door beside him. “He’s out getting more milk. Seems like we really have a lot of visitors today.”
Castor frowned, but Jeric smiled. “Hey, it isn't a bad thing. As long as we can please our customers they’ll come back. It’s a good way to be kind to the community.”
I know where this is going. “I don’t really care to reach out to the community. Will you be paying more for more work?”
“Of course. You get paid for what you do. If you work longer you get rewarded for that work. Now you better hurry up, we have customers.
Castor grabbed an apron off the wall next to dozens of pots and pans, grabbed a wet cloth near the pump in the right back corner, and made her way back out into the dining room. She quickly began to clear and wipe down tables as customers came and left. Usually the inn wouldn’t be nearly this full, but with the Founders Day, coming up, there was much celebration going on.
Castor sighed as she wiped off a table that had been used by some overly messy folks. Cider was soaked into the tablecloth, eggs, butter, and jam has been tossed about like a salad, and to top it off, there were two apples with just one bite taken out of them.
Why must people waste food like this? What are they, pigs? No I guess not because at least pigs eat ALL of their food. Maybe these people know that pigs get the leftovers so they don’t finish their meals. Maybe they’re relatives!
Frustrated, Castor spun around with the two apples, and tossed them for the waste bin near the bar, not realizing that someone had been walking straight in her range of fire. The apples smacked the person’s neck hard and thumped to the ground.
Castor dropped her rag on the table. Now I’ve done it. “Sir I am so sorry, I should have been more careful.”
The man turned around and Castor growled. “Never mind, I’m not sorry.”
Points:
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Canary word: Present
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Hey, Mess! I'm going to review this!
While I normally find starting off a story with someone waking up and getting ready is a bit cliché, I think you avoid making it cliché with a nice mix of humor and imagery (i.e. staying up late makes her feel like she's having a hangover, her hair looking like a tornado; both statements I can relate to).
"Castor stopped thinking and started brushing, realizing what she had said." This sentence confused me because I thought she was just thinking the italicized words since they weren't bordered by quotation marks. Also, it says she was thinking, so it leaves the reader unsure.
"Hello Castor, been sleeping inn" There's an extra n there.
I love the ending of this chapter; it's just as important for the end of the first chapter to have a good hook or something to make the reader keep reading as it is at the end of a book within a series, and you definitely achieve that hook here, leaving us wondering who Castor is so angry at.
I might suggest in a rewrite, trying to write this story in first person point of view since the main character interjects her thoughts so much, it might be easier in the first person. Just a suggestion.
You've got a lot of good things going in this chapter, Messenger, and I'm honestly excited to read the next chapter of this.
Hope this review helped; it's not as detailed as some of my reviews have been because I was just enjoying reading the piece; it could hold my attention and I enjoyed the main character's whit.
-tgirly
Well that was fast!
It was a pun. the double N is intentional.
As for the thoughts, the amount diminishes in later chapters I think. Thanks for your time!
~Messenger
Oh, I get it now. Ha, that's punny. Nice.
so very punny it makes me smile xD
Oooooooh, intriguing.
First of all, I want to point out, just in general, a need of writing clean-up. There are some grammatical/stylistic errors that you'll need to take care of at some point in the future. For your reference, here are some examples:
The funny thing is, you properly formatted your dialogue here:
So just watch for that--dialogue with tags should have commas inside the quotes before the tag, rather than using periods or exclamation points. Also, if someone is addressing another character, using that character's name, the name or title should be separated from the rest of the line with commas, like this:
“Hello Castor, been sleeping inn?” --> "Hello, Castor, been sleeping inn?”
(P.S. I am a complete sucker for puns, so obviously I loved that.)
I won't go through and nitpick everything that needs cleaning up, because a) that would be a waste of your time reading what could've otherwise been a good review and b) I'm a big believer that cleaning up grammar should be one of the last things you worry about in revision (unless your grammar is so atrocious that people can't comprehend your story). But I just wanted to point that out so you know what to keep an eye on while writing further.
Now, we've got some good points to this chapter. I like that, although there isn't much dialogue in the beginning, we get Castor's thoughts as she wakes up and moves about her living space. We get to know her a bit in her own words, early on, and we find that she's relateable.
(Oodles of hair? Yes, until I chopped it all off on Saturday. Beauty sleep that actually makes you feel utterly unglamorous? Duh.)
Plus we've got some intrigue. Why has Castor been consistently staying up late? Who is the man she runs into, and why doesn't she like him? What is their history together? The latter questions, especially, set us up for something that, at this point, looks like it'll be a big plot point.
I think my main issue with this chapter is that there are a lot of lines--both dialogue and description--that sound like they're trying too hard to set things up for us. I mean, I get that. It's a common issue with first chapters because we want our readers to know what's going on. But here are some examples:
All three of these are clunky and unnatural because they're straining to let us know exactly what the setting looks like and exactly what's going on. It's important to ground your readers in a setting, but these sentences try too hard. It's okay to leave a bit to our imaginations. For example, in the first sentence--do we absolutely need to know the door is to the right? And if we do, you can simplify the way you tell us. We know the door is in a wall, because that's generally where doors are. So in that case, you can simplify the sentence like so:
As for the other two sentences, expositional lines of dialogue like these often come across as unrealistic. For example, when I get to work, I don't think, "Oh, I've already gotten used to this." I'm thinking about how tired I am, how much I don't want to be there, how much I despise needy customers, what needs doing...things like that. Castor thinking, "I could get used to this...oh, wait, I already have" seems more like you trying to let us know that she's worked here awhile than a natural thought she would have.
Similarly, Jeric telling her that she gets paid for the amount of work she does comes across as you letting us know that she's a paid employee, when we could already figure that out from context.
Obviously I haven't read your other chapters yet--this may not be a problem later on, when you feel less need to use dialogue and prose to set up the setting for us. But it's just something to think about and keep an eye on. Any time you use a dialogue or character thought to let us know about backstory or setting, ask yourself: is this something a person would actually say or think? If so, you're good! If not, either find a way to change that line so it's more natural, or else find a different way to incorporate the information into your story.
Blue
tank you BLue i had these typos and stuff fixed up, but i must've gotten the wrong draft (i have it in two different places) and this is the grammarly un-edited one >.<
Not a problem
Anyway, yours isn't so bad that we can't even read it, so it's really something to worry about later.
The link leads... To this again?
stupid computer >.< Their should be no link
Knight Dragon, here to review!
Um, bro, you've got some errant coding in this:
If you're going for an image insert, the code you want is:
[img]{Insert URL here}[/img]Did you mean to hyperlink beauty? There's something really strange going in with your piece.
Suggestion: get rid of the "and" and make that two separate sentences. It flows weirdly as is.
Same suggestion.
I see you've transitioned from an affinity for commas to an over-zealousness for and.
Dangling modifiers typically don't bother me, but this one deserved attention for the funny mental image it conjured. You have a door grabbing and dragging people in? Or the aroma? This could be worded more carefully.
You missed a period before "Castor".
Hmm. Interesting set up. I'm not really sure where the story's headed, but we'll see, won't we?
Hope this helps!
Hey! I'm not much of a story reviewer, so I'll make this rather focused.
Here are some grammar errors that you should look at.
Speech tags actually need something a little different than this. You put a comma at the end, and treat it all like one sentence.
"The mummy walked," he shrieked.
He shrieked "The mummy walked!" to the guests of the museum.
"The mummy," he panted "walked."
This is an awkward sentence. It has too many ideas going on in it.
It might be easier to rephrase it "All the real work went on behind the bar. Castor headed that way. I could get used to this. Oh wait, I already have!
The reason I broke up the thoughts and her walking is because of something I'll explain a little later about walking in stories.
You missed the second quotation " mark.
Ok, now that the nit-picky stuff is done, let's get on to what I was going to tell you about walking in stories. Basically one of the short story people I read interviews for said this: If they have to walk to the door, your moving too slow. Basically what that means is you don't want to have to puppet your character through the entire story. Instead of saying X walked across the room through the door entering into the Y, just say X entered the Y. We don't need to have a narration of every little direction just like an actor doesn't need to be told that if they're going to sit down, they need to find a chair to sit in.
Same thing with getting dressed. Instead of telling us where she grabbed things from, or that she even grabbed them, just have her put them on and describe HOW she puts them on instead of just saying that she does. "Castor wiggled into the fish-net stockings hopping across the room to pull them up, her hands already fiddling with getting a hair tie as she adjusted her pants. She stuck the hair tie in her mouth as she shrugged on a shirt three sizes too small for her."
Also this:
If it just contains clothes, just say clothes. Clothing materials is sort of a waste of a word and a mislead because she doesn't have fabric for clothes in there, she has clothes.
Overall it's a little long winded for a novel. It doesn't pick up very quickly and you're already showing us she's irresponsible before we even get halfway through the first chapter, so that's not really going to make me like her any more. That being said, I do read stories where I don't like the characters, and it is hard to get me to like characters, so take it with a grain of salt.
-Aley